None of them spoke to her. All of a sudden they had dropped her again and she was just as friendless as she had been before Cora Rathmore suggested the secret supper.

When she went back to Number 30, however, Cora followed her.

"Now, I want to know just what you mean to do, Miss?" she said, standing inside the door and scowling at Nancy.

"What about?"

"About the supper to-night."

"You certainly don't need _me_ at the supper," observed Nancy, quietly.

"I should hope not! But we don't propose to have you run to the teachers and give our secrets away."

Nancy started up from her chair and advanced a step toward her tormentor. She really had it in her mind to box Cora's ears--and the black-eyed girl knew it.

"Don't you dare touch me!" she cried, shrinking back.

"Then don't you dare suggest that I'd be a telltale," warned Nancy. "I leave that to you."

"Oh, you do!"

Nancy was silent, and Cora calmed down.

"Then you'll go out for the evening?" she asked, at last.

"Gladly," said Nancy.

"Mabel and Hilary say you can stay in 38."

"Very well."

"And of course you are not going to be mean about your share of the goodies?" asked Cora, slily.

Nancy wanted to say that it seemed to her _all_ the goodies were hers.

But she only tossed Cora the key of her closet.

"I hope you'll have a good time," she said, in a low voice. "But if I were you, Cora, and had treated anybody as meanly as you have me, I could _never_ have a good time."

"Pooh!" replied Cora, insolently. Such considerations made no impression on her. She only thought that Nancy was "too easy for anything," and laughed and joked about her to Grace Montgomery.

Nancy would not cry before her roommate. She spent the evening as usual in apparently close application to the lessons for the next day; scarcely a word was said in Number 30 until curfew at nine. The other girls kept entirely away from the room that evening. Going back and forth might have drawn the suspicion of Miss Maybrick to that particular dormitory.

At bedtime the two girls occupying Number 30 undressed and got into bed as usual. The electric lights went out on that floor. The corridors were lighted only by caged gas jets, turned low. In each room was a candle in an ample stick. The girls had to use these if they needed to move about in the night, and all the after-hour spreads were illuminated by candles, each girl partic.i.p.ating bringing her own taper to the feast.

The hour between nine and ten dragged by drearily enough. Especially was this so for Nancy. She lay wide awake, with swollen, feverish eyes, and waited for the ten o'clock gong.

At that hour the lights on the upper floors were out and, a little later, Miss Maybrick's soft footfall sounded in the corridor.

Occasionally the teacher turned a k.n.o.b and looked into a study. The draperies between studies and bedrooms had to be left open so that the teacher could cast the ray of her electric hand-lamp right in upon the pillows of the two beds.

And if there was not the proper number of heads on those pillows, an investigation was sure to follow!

Miss Maybrick was known to be a sound sleeper, however. It was pretty safe for the girls to have their "orgies" on the nights this particular instructor was on duty.

Miss Maybrick went past and, in a moment, Cora slipped out of bed and to the door. In the moonlight Nancy saw her crouched beside the door, reach up and turn the k.n.o.b, open the portal a little way, and listen.

The rustle of the teacher's skirts was lost in the distance. She had already been upon the upper floors; and now her inspection was over. The soft closing of her own door, which was right at the head of the stairway, came to the ears of the listening girls.

Almost immediately there was a rustling and whispering in the corridor.

Cora threw the door of Number 30 open. Somebody giggled.

"Come on!" whispered Cora, sharply.

Nancy, feeling that it was all wrong and that no good would come of it, slid out of bed, sought her slippers with her bare toes, wriggled her feet into them, and seized her gray robe.

She darted out of Number 30 before any of the visitors arrived, and went to the nearest bathroom. There she waited until she was pretty sure the twenty girls had gathered to enjoy their stolen fun.

Number 38 was just across in the other short corridor. Nancy ran there, sobbing quietly to herself. Just before she opened the door somebody grabbed her arm.

Oh! how frightened she was for the moment. She was sure a lurking teacher had found her out of her room.

"Hush! don't be a dunce! It's only me," said a kind, if sharp, voice.

"Jennie Bruce!"

"Of course it is. Who did you think I was--your grandmother's ghost?"

giggled Jennie, pinching her.

"Oh, oh!" panted Nancy.

"You're scared to death. What's the matter?"

"You were going into Number 38?"

"Yes," admitted Nancy.

"Well, come into my room. It's Number 40. I'm chummed with a girl who has gone to that party."

"You--you know about it, then?" stammered Nancy.

"I should say I did."

"And your roommate was invited--and not _you_?"

"Grace and her crowd aren't in love with me," remarked Jennie.

"Oh!"

"And I reckon they are not overpoweringly fond of _you_?" suggested Jennie.